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With a humorless laugh, Kiera raised an eyebrow at me. “I’ve noticed that.” I laughed at her comment and her expression changed. “You were always right though. And I did kind of deserve your…harshness.”
Quieting, I cupped her cheek. “No, you didn’t. You never deserved the things I said to you.”
“I was horribly…misleading to you,” she said, guilt and sadness drawing down her features.
“You didn’t know I loved you,” I whispered, stroking her cheek.
Her eyes were a liquid green when she looked up at me. “I knew you cared for me. I was…callous.”
Callous? I suppose I could give her that much. There were times when she’d been coarse with me. And vice versa. To soften the blow of agreeing with her, I gave her a small smile and a kiss. “True. But we seem to have gotten off track. I believe we were talking about my messed-up psyche.”
Shaking away the seriousness of the moment, she let out a brief laugh. “Right, your…whoring.”
“Ouch.” I laughed at her comment, gathered my courage, then pulled off the bandage that had been holding my splintered heart together for far too long. “I suppose I should start with the whole tortured-childhood speech…”
She tried to stop me from telling her things that she knew would bring me pain, but I needed her to know the whole story, the one I didn’t tell anyone, not even Denny. I prepped her with “You’re going to find it funny.”
She disagreed, and I supposed she was right. It wasn’t ha-ha funny, but it was interesting. For us, at least. “Well, okay, maybe not funny…coincidental, then.”
When she gave me a confused expression, I slowly began my story. It was difficult, but I started peeling back the lies that were wrapped around me, started showing her the skeletons that I’d pretended my entire life weren’t there. “It seems that my mother was…enamored with my father’s best friend. So when dear old Dad had to leave town for several months…some family emergency thing back East…you can imagine his surprise when he came back home to find his blushing bride pregnant.”
Kiera’s mouth fell open, and I could tell she’d instantly spotted the similarities to our own situation. By the shock on Kiera’s face, she hadn’t suspected my dad wasn’t my real dad. No one did. That was our family’s greatest secret, and biggest shame, and it wasn’t something we openly discussed. With anyone. And it was the main reason why neither one of them loved me.
Chapter 27
Preparing for Reality
I felt like a weight had been lifted when we left the Needle. There weren’t any secrets between us anymore; Kiera knew everything about me. She knew what I’d done, and she knew why I’d done it. She knew the real reason why my parents had treated me with such disdain. She knew it all. A part of me still feared that Kiera would reject me, but right now, all was right in the world.
The air was crisp and cold as Kiera and I walked back to my car in the parking lot. The chill in the breeze was an unspoken reminder that winter was just around the corner. I welcomed the change though. As the temperature dropped, surely Kiera and I would heat up. Since all the walls between us had come down, there was nothing keeping us from each other. I might have to share her with Denny, but at least I wasn’t losing her. As sad as it sounded, as long as I got to keep a part of her heart as my own, I was okay with sharing her body. At least, that was what I was telling myself. Over and over if I needed to. I can do this.
To shift the focus of my thoughts before they got too dark, I looked over at Kiera with a serious expression. When we reached the car, I stopped and said, “There is one more thing I wanted to talk to you about.”
She instantly tensed. “What?”
Shifting my intense face to a breezy grin, I told her, “I can’t believe you stole my car…really?”
Kiera laughed, which I didn’t find amusing, but I did find charming. Then she cringed, and I knew she was remembering the events that had led up to the carjacking. “You kind of deserved it at the time. You’re lucky it came back to you in one piece,” she said, poking my chest.
I knew I hadn’t really done anything wrong, but I also knew how much it would have torn me up if I’d witnessed Kiera in that position with Denny. I can do this. Not wanting to dwell on the negative aspect of our relationship, I made myself stay in a humorous frame of mind. “Hmmmm…in the future, could you just slap me again, and leave my baby alone?”
With a playful frown, I opened her door. She placed a foot inside, then grabbed my chin. “In the future, could you not go on anymore ‘dates’?”
Her voice sounded playful, but the look in her eye wasn’t. She was seriously asking this of me. She wanted me to be faithful to her, while she split her love between Denny and me. Grief struck me for a moment, that I couldn’t have exactly what I wanted with her, but I pushed it back. Anything was good enough.
Grinning, I gave her a light kiss. “Yes, ma’am.” Shaking my head at the chaos of my life, I walked around to my side of the car.
Kiera snuggled into my side on the drive home. We held hands as she rested her head on my shoulder, and I stroked her long, slender fingers. Peaceful. That was the only word I could use to describe how I felt. Or maybe blissful, euphoric, satisfied. Except…that wasn’t entirely true. Whenever I dug a little deeper, I touched a nerve of pain. She still isn’t mine…
I wanted to feel peace right now though, so I stopped digging into my soul, stopped overthinking the situation. Delusional happiness was better than none.
When my house came into view, a pang of reality went through me. The joy we’d found tonight would be tested when we stepped through that door. I’d have to wrestle with the idea of sharing her; Kiera would have to wrestle with the idea of willingly betraying the man she loved. And I couldn’t deny that she loved Denny. Through all of this, that had never changed. For either one of us. He deserved so much better than both of us.
As we cuddled in my car parked in the driveway, I thought over everything I’d felt since Kiera had arrived—the ups, the downs, the dreams, nightmares, fantasies. She’d permeated every aspect of my life, from waking to sleeping. It was a bit remarkable to me that a person could become so entangled with another person’s psyche that it was impossible to remove them. Traces of Kiera were permanently seared into the very essence of my being.
Kissing her head, I murmured, “I dream about you sometimes…about what it would have been like if Denny hadn’t come back, if you were mine. Holding your hand, walking into the bar with you on my arm…not having to hide anything anymore. Telling the world that I love you.”
Smiling, she looked up at me. “You mentioned that you dreamed about me once. You never said about what though.” She kissed my cheek, then added, “I dream about you too sometimes.”
“Really?” That surprised me, and made me really happy. I’d kind of thought that I slipped her mind the moment I was out of her sight. “Huh, we’re kind of pathetic, aren’t we?”
I laughed as I considered all the stolen moments we’d had with each other in our minds. What a life dream-Kellan and dream-Kiera must have already had together. “And what are your dreams about?”
She giggled with embarrassment, her cheeks flushed. “Honestly, I mostly dream about sleeping with you.”
The look on her face when she spoke about sex was so damn cute, I could barely restrain myself from leaning down and sucking on her plump lip. I let out a much-needed laugh. Of the two of us, Kiera was undoubtedly the innocent one, yet she’d been having the erotic dreams, while mine had generally been on the more romantic side.
Amused, Kiera laughed with me. Grabbing her hand, I laced our fingers together. “God…is that all I am to you?” I asked.
Hoping she didn’t say yes, I watched as her laughter ended and her expression grew serious. “No…no, you’re so much more.”
My laughter dried up as the moment grew intense. “Good, because you mean everything to me.” What would I be without her? I didn’t want to fathom it.
Kiera clutched my hand tighter as she cuddled closer to me in the car. I wished we could stay for the rest of the night, but it was already late, and if Denny woke up and found us out here…there was just no good way to explain it. There wasn’t a good way to explain a lot of things between us. That slap in the bar, for instance. “What did you tell Denny?”
Kiera cringed, and I knew she didn’t want to talk about this. We needed to though. I needed to know the story if I was going to back it up. “That you slept with my sister and broke her heart. That’s believable. Everyone saw you at the bar together. Denny seemed to buy it.”
My heart sank as I felt the ticking of time closing in around us. She’d forgotten something very important in that lie…an aspect of it that we couldn’t control. “That won’t work, Kiera.”
Her voice sped up as she started panicking. “Yes, it will. I’ll talk to Anna; she’ll back me up. I’ve had to lie for her before. I won’t tell her why, of course…and Denny probably will never ask her about it anyway.”
